Juergen Liebig

Biography

Juergen Liebig studies the organization of insect societies. In the past, he primarily worked to decipher behavioral interactions and chemical signaling involved in the regulation of reproduction within ant, wasp, and termite colonies.

Professor Liebig is currently extending his research focus to questions about the molecular basis of ant and termite social organization, olfactory communication, as well as other aspects of behavioral and developmental plasticity. This approach is based on the availability of the draft genomes of two ant and one termite species he helped to obtain.

Liebig's group is further extending their research through collaborations that focus on studying changes in gene expression that aren't caused by changes in an organism's DNA sequence (called epigenetics), and how such mechanisms may contribute to shaping ant and termite societies.

Strohm, E. & Liebig, J. 2008. Why are so Many Bees but so Few Digger Wasps Social? The Effect of Provisioning Mode and Helper Efficiency on the Distribution of Sociality Among the Apoidea. In Ecology of Social Evolution (ed. J. Korb & J. Heinze), pp. 109-128: Springer.